What Dusk Divides

by Clara Coulson

  The fear gorta in the immediate vicinity, shaking off the injuries dealt by McDermott’s spells, lumbered toward us from all directions. Stalling for time, I erected a thick dome of ice using a small fraction of the pent-up energy that had been meant for the quick freeze spell. As the fear gorta pounded away at the ice, I examined McDermott’s injuries.

  He was still conscious, but his skin had gone white as a sheet, and his lips flapped soundlessly as he clutched at the chest wound that was spilling an alarming amount of blood. Knocking his hand aside, I ripped open his uniform jacket and the shirt beneath to reveal a nearly perfect circle of shredded skin; the spear had been spinning when it struck him.

  Inside the hole, shards of broken ribs swam in the pool of blood that had filled his chest cavity. The spear had either clipped his heart or one of the major blood vessels that surrounded it, and he was hemorrhaging. Badly.

  If we were in spitting distance of a medical facility staffed with high-level healers, there might have been some shred of hope that he could be saved. Iron damage to the heart could heal, but like with heart damage to humans, it required a great deal of medical intervention. Expertise our group did not possess.

  Equipment we didn’t have on hand. Spells we didn’t know.

  McDermott was going to die here, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  He peered up at me, his wide, watery eyes begging for help I couldn’t deliver. He was in immense pain, the touch of iron burning through his chest, and I couldn’t even assuage that. I hadn’t anticipated coming into contact with iron in Tír na nÓg, so I didn’t even have a salve or potion that could reduce McDermott’s suffering.

  McDermott coughed again, weaker this time. He was fading, but so was the shock. His healing factor had kicked in and negated the effects of the blood loss, just enough to restore some semblance of clarity. Blood bubbling at his lips, he said, “Am I dying?”

  “Yes,” I answered morosely. “I’m sorry.”

  He sucked in a wet, gasping breath. “Who killed me?”

  “I don’t know for sure”—I glanced at the opaque dome of ice, already riddled with cracks from the constant pounding of the fear gorta—“but I suspect it was Agatha Bismarck, Abarta’s human ally. She’s been in possession of the Spear of Lugh for several months.”

  “Killed by a Tuatha weapon, wielded by a mortal,” he croaked out.

  “I’ll be the laughing stock of the army.”

  “No, you won’t.” I gently grasped his trembling hand. “You’ll be remembered as the unit leader who died defending his comrades from an ambush while on a dangerous mission for Queen Mab. Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a good soldier, and I’ll make sure that General Maguire and Queen Mab acknowledge that.”

  McDermott’s eyes, now eclipsed by that far-off look of impending death, met mine again. “Why treat me with such dignity when I treated you with such disdain?”

  “Two reasons,” I answered with a sad smile. “Because one, it’s the right thing to do. And two, if I held grudges against every full-blooded sídhe who treated me like shit, my list of enemies would be bigger than the entire remaining population of the Earth.”

  McDermott feigned a grin, exposing the blood smeared across his teeth. “You are an…interesting person, Whelan. I wish I had gotten a…a chance…to know you better before…” He coughed, but

  this time, it sounded more like a death rattle. “I am sorry for my ill treatment of you. You are…a fine man. If we ever…meet in the afterlife, I swear that…that…I will treat you with…the respect that you deserve.”

  “I appreciate that.” I squeezed his hand. “Before you, ah, go, is there any message you want to pass on?”

  “Last words?” He took a ragged breath, one I knew would be his last. “No…none at all. I have no living family. But perhaps I…

  will meet those I have lost…when I reach the…the…”

  The light in McDermott’s eyes flickered out, and his body stilled. A moment later, his heart stopped. And a moment after that, his soul detached from his body and flitted off to the void in search of its final resting place.

  I set his body on the ground, arms crossed over his chest, and stood up just as the first hand of the mobbing fear gorta broke through the ice dome, just as the golden spear now tipped with iron came soaring down toward me yet again.

  I spared a quick glance at my own blood-drenched body, my clothes soaked red from chest to knees. Anger as frigid as a midwinter night seared my muscles and chilled all my veins, a white mist rising from my skin.

  You want a fight? I thought. I’ll give you a fucking fight.

  Chapter Eleven

  Five Hours Till Dusk

  Collapsing the ice dome, I threw myself backward as the horde of fear gorta tumbled down atop McDermott’s body, their hunger drawing them to the fresh corpse. But before they could take a bite, the humming spear cut through the writhing mass, piercing half of them in vital places. The tip of the spear drove itself into the dirt at my feet, and immediately started vibrating as the wielder recalled it. So, careful to avoid the iron addition, I grabbed hold of the shaft and let the spear take me for a ride.

  The spear rebounded at great speed, straining my arm muscles. But I held fast as I soared over the streambed, getting a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield. Indira was down for the count, having been touched two or three more times by the fear gorta. She lay slumped behind Odette, who was huffing and puffing as she attempted to fend off ten fear gorta at once with a complex telekinesis spell that allowed her to punch a bunch of large rocks at supersonic speed.

  It was a far more effective spell against the fear gorta, as they couldn’t absorb kinetic energy, but it also required a lot more magic energy to perform. Odette was already scraping the bottom

  of her spiritual barrel. If this fight didn’t end in the next minute or two, she was going to have to fall back on her life force and hope for the best.

  Graham, who’d come to Odette and Indira’s aid earlier, had been overwhelmed by the fear gorta when yet another section of the streambed collapsed to reveal more underground pockets crammed full of the creatures. She’d lashed out with high-impact spells, crushing and slashing the creatures. But because she’d fallen into the pit with the fear gorta, at least one of them had managed to touch her.

  The resulting energy zap had weakened her attacks just enough to allow several more of them to tackle her. She was now buried under a squirming pile of fear gorta, nearly drained of all magic energy. And while she wasn’t yet dead, her choking gasps as one of the creatures violently strangled her indicated she wasn’t long for this world.

  As I flew overhead, I pointed two fingers at the pile of fear gorta and shot off a blast of cold air. Halfway to the ground, the air coalesced into a volley of baseball-sized hail. The hail pelted the creatures, shattering bones and bursting organs and imploding skulls.

  With all the fear gorta sprawled atop Graham either dead or disabled, she was able to extricate herself from the tangle and make a desperate lunge for the edge of the pit. She was so disoriented that the normally easy jump was a tedious endeavor, and her feet scrabbled against the dirt walls until they found enough purchase to push her up and over the edge.

  When she rolled onto her back, heaving in air through her damaged throat, she caught my eye just before the spear carried me across the tree line.

  There was a thank-you in her look, somewhere, but it was buried underneath a heap of embarrassment.

  Sídhe hated it when they had to rely on the help of “lesser”

  creatures.

  Turning my attention back to the task at hand, I analyzed my trajectory and determined the spear was taking me toward a patch of thick brush roughly fifty feet ahead. Presumably, there was a clearing past this brush, where some number of Abarta’s minions were lying in wait.

  I doubted the fear gorta attack was their doing; the creatures had been hibernating in the streambed for a long time, so it made more sense th
at the Morrígan had decided to make use of them. But it seemed to me that Abarta and company had somehow gained vital intel about our movements. Either there was a spy at Fort Drochrath, or there was a spy in these woods. Or both.

  God, I hope the Interloper isn’t following us. I do not need another run-in with that thing today.

  As I sailed on toward the brush, I raised my shield with the integrated force blast spell. Despite the fact that doing so gave away my position. The reason I did so was because the last time Bismarck and I had fought, I’d used the spear’s recall function to land a brutal kick. I was certain that the reason she’d thrown the spear from such a distance this time was to lure me into attempting the same move again.

  I shot through the tall brush so fast my shield shredded the foliage, and I flew into the clearing with a burst of green confetti to announce my arrival. Two redcaps who’d been crouched just behind the foliage greeted me to the surprise party by ramming their pikes into my shield.

  The shield took a beating from their immense strength, but the pikes didn’t punch through. When the targeted force spell activated, they were both flung backward into two groups of svartálfar who’d been waiting in the wings to attack as soon as my shield went down. The lithe elves got bowled over by the much bigger redcaps, ruining any chance they had at killing me swiftly.

  The Spear of Lugh was undeterred by the pike strikes, and it dragged me on toward its lord and master: the one and only Agatha Bismarck. She was waiting in the middle of the clearing, hand outstretched to reclaim her prized weapon.

  She had changed substantially since last we met. Her assortment of gold jewelry, all imbued with Abarta’s magic, had grown into two full sets of rings, two wrist cuffs, two upper armbands, two studs in each ear, and a gold chain necklace laden with charms.

  More glitters of gold peeked out from behind the folds of her gauzy, sleeveless tunic that fell to mid-thigh, hinting at another set of charmed objects secured to her belt. Her leather boots sported gold pins shaped like arrows with wings, and I had a feeling that “lightness of foot” was the least of the skills they could give her.

  And finally, tattoos. A lot of tattoos. Thick gold lines ran up and down her arms, curved around her neck, and crept up her cheeks, a mockery of sídhe marks. Every square inch of the ink thrummed with energy, a faint glow highlighting the extensive pale-pink scars from the nasty burns Bismarck had acquired when Daur Dá Bláo caught fire.

  Bismarck couldn’t become a magic practitioner—you were born with magic energy, or you weren’t, and if you wanted to change that, you had to become something else, something not human. But she had gotten as close as a mundane physically could, borrowing so

  much power from a Tuatha god that the weight of it must have been slowly crushing her soul.

  Yet as I rocketed toward her on the back of her own weapon, she looked completely at ease, a smug smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.

  When I was mere feet from her, she called up her own shield. Just before our shields made contact, I pushed almost half the energy I’d called up for the quick freeze spell into my own shield charm, nearly overtaxing the bracelet. So when our shields collided, mine was the slightly stronger of the two. And when the force spell discharged, it was Bismarck who was ripped off her feet and thrown across the clearing.

  She crashed headlong into a tree and dropped into a puddle of muddy water at its base.

  Smirk after that, you arrogant bitch.

  The impact with her shield threw me back a few feet, and I was finally forced to let go of the spear, yanking my hand out of the way before the iron tip nicked me. I slid to a stop on my knees, ducking to avoid the swing of a dark elf’s sword. The sword skimmed off my shield, and the force spell, mostly drained of power, weakly pushed the elf back.

  He stumbled into two of his comrades, who grabbed his arms and steadied him. Then the three of them set their sights on me.

  Dark, smoky magic billowed from their hands and blades and even from the tongues perched between their pointy teeth.

  But the elves were not my only concern. The entire clearing was ringed with enemies.

  Four more dark elves and seven more redcaps, not counting the ones who’d been knocked down earlier. Five half-trolls with meaty fists and enough pent-up aggression to bend titanium beams like they were paperclips. And rounding out the bunch, three full-blooded trolls.

  The trolls were ten feet tall and armed with huge wooden clubs.

  They were also blocking three of the four exits to the clearing.

  The only way out was the way I had come, an escape route that would pin me between the fight with the fear gorta and the fight with these assholes.

  One of the trolls carried a special package. That package was named Drake the dhampir, and he was bound and gagged with charmed ropes that were suppressing his magic and dhampir physical traits.

  He’d been roughed up by somebody. His left eye was swollen shut.

  His lip was torn and puffy. His chin was caked in half-dried

  blood. But he didn’t appear to be seriously injured. He’d been set upon by more enemies than he could fight, and they’d subdued him.

  But why not just kill him? I wondered. Abarta can find himself another necromancer somewhere in the Otherworld, one who isn’t part human and prone to acting on human moral values.

  A mystery I would have to leave for later.

  Expelling the rest of the energy I’d gathered for the quick freeze spell, I loosed a wicked blizzard full of tiny, razor-sharp ice spikes. Visibility dropped to zero throughout the clearing, with the sole exception of a small circle, in which stood the troll that had a wiggling Drake draped over its shoulder.

  As the countless spikes tore into skin, disorienting the gathered group of mooks with a thousand pricks of pain, I took off for the troll.

  Drawing a knife, I came in low. When the troll swung its enormous club at my head, I jumped, landed on the beast’s arm, and jammed the knife into its right eye. The pain spell in the blade discharged, and the troll reared back, shrieking.

  While its huge hand struggled to grab the small knife, I took the opportunity to grab Drake. I slung him over my shoulder, vaulted off the troll’s back, and landed outside the clearing.

  I sprinted to the left, heading back toward the streambed, from which emanated the sounds of a waning battle. I needed to help finish the fight with the fear gorta and get everyone moving.

  Fast. Before my ice storm dissipated.

  Since almost everyone had been partially drained of energy by the fear gorta, the hostiles back in the clearing represented a much bigger threat than usual.

  Drake suddenly started thrashing, muffled words coming through the cloth gag in his mouth. It sounded vaguely like, “Watch out, Whelan!”

  The zing of the approaching spear caught my ear a split second later.

  I tossed Drake to the side, behind the cover of a nearby tree, and spun around, skidding to a stop and kicking up a cloud of dirt and leafy debris. With a swift tug, I drew Fragarach, held it up with one hand, and braced the flat side of the blade with my other.

  The oncoming spear didn’t have time to redirect its trajectory to avoid the sword. The false iron tip struck the broadside with a deafening clang of spelled metal on spelled metal. The false tip

  disintegrated, pelting me with white-hot iron bits that miraculously missed all my exposed skin.

  Then the two ancient Tuatha relics came into direct contact with one another—and they were not happy about it.

  The powerful magic in both weapons violently backfired, throwing me twenty feet across the forest. The spear, spinning out of control, sprang back in the direction it had come from. Just as Bismarck crashed through the brush in search of me.

  Yelping, she attempted to dodge the out-of-control spear. But because her shield was designed to allow the spear to pass through, the back of the shaft rammed into her left shoulder and sent her sprawling face first onto the ground. Her nose loudly snappe
d at the impact, and blood gushed out, soaking into the dirt.

  Dazed, she didn’t get up immediately.

  I did get up immediately, though it hurt like hell. My gut wound was bleeding again.

  Scrambling back over to Drake, I sheathed Fragarach, hefted him up, and made a mad dash for the streambed. As I ran, I worked up a quick counterspell to override the binding ropes. Once the bindings failed, Drake wrenched his hands and ankles free.

  I set him down. He tossed the smoking ropes aside, then tugged the gag out of his mouth.

  “I can stop the fear gorta,” he said in a rush, like the words had been stuck in his throat for ages, “with necromancy.”

  I peered down at the streambed. There were still over twenty fear gorta remaining, though the entire muddy battlefield was strewn with their mutilated corpses. “Do it. Now. We need to get out of here. My ice storm is already weakening, and I don’t want to get into a prolonged battle with Abarta’s mooks.”

  Without complaint, he slid down the bank, rapidly whispering an invocation. His turquoise aura flared to life around his hands, then billowed outward, encompassing the entire battlefield. After the last word flew off his tongue, the energy coalesced into tight bands that wrapped each of the remaining fear gorta head to toe, a mimicry of mummification.

  At first, they struggled to break out of Drake’s spell by eating the energy. But Drake’s necromantic magic didn’t work like regular magic, so their absorption ability had minimal effect.

  With a growl of effort, Drake drained away all the energy the fear gorta had consumed from our allies, and then some.

  The fear gorta immediately reverted to their dormant state and collapsed into the mud. Everyone who’d been fighting them staggered to a stop and turned their attention to Drake, giving him a round of muted thanks. They then looked to me as I jogged past him, signaling with both hands for everyone to pack up and go, go, go.